Amos 5:15

Hate the evil, and love the good,.... Evil is not only not to be sought, but to be hated, especially the evil of sin, because of its evil nature, and pernicious effects and consequences; and, if it

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

Slight dislikes will do little in this ease, you rulers and judges must heartily hate, and show that you hate, the evil, both ways, doings, contrivers, and abettors of the evil among the people and yourselves; and love the good; commend, encourage, defend, and reward all good in others, and do it yourselves; let your heart be toward good things and good men. Establish judgment in the gate: by this it is evident the prophet speaks to governors and judges among them: what the import of the phrase is see ,12. Set up honest and upright judges in every gate, where judges did sit in those days. It may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious; possibly he will forgive, or abate or respite the evil days, possibly he may give you his gracious presence, and yet save the remnant of Joseph; what the invasions of enemies, or the civil wars, have spared, and left in Samaria and Israel, the ten tribes: .

Amos 5:15 Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the LORD God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.Ver. 15. Hate the evil, and love the good] God doth so; you must also, or else never look for his gracious presence with you: for idem velle, atque idem nolle, ea demure vera est Amicitia; True friends do both will and nill the same things. Minutius Felix saith, that he and his friend Octavius did so. The like did Basil and Nazianzen, Jonathan and David: “ Corporibus geminis spiritus unus erat. ” All God’ s people, as they partake of the Divine nature, so they live the life of God, Ephesians 4:18, and have the same both sympathies and antipathies (as I may so speak), abhorring that which is evil, cleaving to that which is good, Romans 12:9. God, they know, hateth evil worse than he hateth the devil; for he hateth the devil for sin’ s sake, and not sin for the devil’ s sake: so do they, looking upon sin as the most loathsome thing in the world, the very vomit of the devil, which (so far as they are regenerate) they do infinitely loathe to lick up. And for that which is good, whether things or persons, these they heartily love; not only with a love of desire, as Psalms 42:1-2, but also of complacency, as Psalms 73:25-26, herein resembling Almighty God; not as an image doth a man, in outward lineaments only, but as a son doth his father, in nature and disposition; being daily more and more conformed to the heavenly pattern, and transformeed into the same image from glory to glory, by his Spirit. And establish judgment in the gate] Which hitherto ye have not done, Amos 5:10; Amos 5:12. Perform the duties of your own particular places; be good justicers as well as good men. It is said of Galba and of our Richard III, that they were bad men but good princes; but I hardly think it. Some good parts they might have, and some good acts they might do; but good princes they could not be, unless they did "hate the evil and love the good": but so doth not any bad man, for want of better principles. Make the tree good and the fruits will be good: and the contrary. Evil men may be some way useful to the public, and do good offices for the Church, and yet perish, because not in a good manner, upon a good motive, and for a good end. Revelation 12:16, the earth helped the woman; and yet, Revelation 16:1, the vials of God’ s wrath were poured out upon the earth.

(14, 15) Break in like a beam of sunshine in the darkness. The fearful doom, already spoken of, is after all conditional. Let a moral change be wrought in them, and even now Jehovah, God of hosts, may deign to be with them. Enlist your passions on the right side. No virtue is safe till it is enthusiastic.

Verse 15. Hate the evil, and love the good] What ruins you, avoid; what helps you, cleave to. And as a proof that you take this advice, purify the seats of justice; and then expect God to be gracious to the remnant of Joseph-to the posterity of the ten tribes.

15. The exhortation of Amo 5:14 is repeated in yet stronger terms: Hate the evil, and love the good. Cf. Isaiah 1:16 f. establish judgment in the gate] Rather, set up firmly, set it standing, opposed to lay it on the ground, Amos 5:7. Judgement, like righteousness in Amos 5:7, is pictured as a concrete object, and almost personified: cf. Isaiah 59:14. the remnant of Joseph] The prophet can hardly be thinking of the remnant to which ‘Joseph’ (Amos 5:6) had already been reduced by its many calamities (Amos 4:6-11); for he represents Israel in general as still wealthy and prosperous (cf. Amos 6:13). No doubt he has mentally in view the ‘remnant,’ to which he sees that before long it will have been actually reduced (cf. Amos 3:12), and which he pictures implicitly as including those who respond now to his present invitation to repent; a remnant, such as this, may peradventure merit Jehovah’s mercy (comp. Amos 9:8 f.). The passage contains in germ the doctrine of the preservation, through judgement, of a faithful remnant, which became shortly afterwards a distinctive feature in the teaching of Isaiah.

Hate the evil and love the good - Man will not cease wholly to “seek evil,” unless he “hate” it; nor will he “seek good,” unless he “love” it.

14, 15. In spite of the apparent hopelessness, the prophet renews his appeal, declaring that, if the exhortation is heeded, Jehovah may yet be gracious to a remnant of Joseph.